Applied Sports Science newsletter – November 3, 2016

… “He’s as well-rounded a player as you’re gong to meet,” David Ross, one of the club’s leaders on and off the field, told me at Wrigley Field this week. “That’s why he got the contract he did. He runs the bases well, he reads situations as well as anyone in the game, and of course his glove is Gold Glove–caliber out there in right [field]. The way he helps the young guys, too, that’s a testament to his character and the way he goes about his business. He’s been a huge part of this team’s success this year.”

And there you have it, in Ross’s statement: the case for Jason Heyward’s value, hitting be damned. Appreciating Heyward at this point, when his offensive contributions compare more to an average pitcher’s than an outfielder’s, requires a dose of the persistent optimism that has defined the Cubs this year, but there is indeed a case to be made for him. Sabermetric-minded analysts will marvel at Heyward’s glove, even as they caution that we don’t know enough about defensive statistics to say for sure that his brilliance in right field makes up for the debits incurred by his season at the plate. Old-school pundits, for their part, will be a bit more comfortable giving Heyward credit for his off-field contributions, particularly his mentorship of young players, but they’ll also wonder loudly about why he hasn’t been able to live up to his contract.

On the field, the US women’s soccer team has followed up a thrilling NWSL final with a couple of smashing debuts in friendlies against Switzerland. Off the field, the sport is bogged down in the courts and at the negotiating table.

<brThe talent pipeline is still intact, a fact US coach Jill Ellis celebrated by calling in a staggering 11 uncapped players for camp. Lynn Williams, fresh from winning the NWSL Golden Boot and posting clutch performances to lift Western New York to the league title, scored just 49 seconds into her debut on 19 October. That was a new record for the fastest debut goal in US history – until Kealia Ohai scored 48 seconds after taking the field four days later.

But the NWSL, which has given Williams, Ohai and many other players important years to develop and bridge the gap between college soccer and the international game, still faces uncertainty. The league itself is stable, having already outlasted the two previous US professional leagues by playing a fourth season. Yet players are living on meager wages, and efforts to organize players to speak with a unified voice are slow.

… The side he inherited, which could only finish fourth in a mediocre 2015 season for the big guns, was possibly the worst he had ever had to work with, if not in terms of quality, then certainly in terms of identity. City were not a defined team, their personality was blurred – a side that chose its style according to who they happened to be playing and a team whose work without the ball was very irregular. Barcelona and Bayern had a clear philosophy, while City had players who passed the ball well but played a game that was ultimately decided by individual talent, rather than collective work.

What would make the difference was the work done in training, and nobody would work harder than City’s new coaching staff. Guardiola was set to arrive with his ideas and bring with him a certain type of player he could mould. But he would also manage, as he did at Bayern, with whatever he had at his disposal. Nobody expected him to get all the footballers he needed in the first year (the market was limited and there were many clubs that needed elite performers) and he would inevitably continue to transform the side in the second season. Fans would need to show a certain amount of patience.

… The fact that I want them to err is the first test in building trust. I am not sure in the end if there is anything more important to build in a team, sporting or otherwise, than trust. Part of the key to building trust is to “Be Consistent” – something I blogged about HERE. Part of building trust is to believe in the process of learning and knowing that “Stuff Happens,” which I blogged about HERE. In the end, if trust does not exist, performance will be negatively impacted as well as the athlete’s overall experience in the program.

So the trust in making mistakes as part of learning is vital. The field of play is an “Exploratorium,” to use a word I first heard from the creative Olympic coach Bill Neville. It is a place to stretch your limits and do new things. Contrast that to those coaches who feel you must be perfect, and demand perfection from their players and punish if that perfection is not achieved. I can’t think of a more selfish thing to focus on in a team sport than being “perfect.”

Major-college athletes will have the opportunity to gain some additional time away from their sports and some new input into demands on their time under a series of NCAA rules changes that officially have been proposed this week by the five major conferences.

Faced with a set of similar proposals at the 2016 NCAA convention, the conferences instead adopted a resolution under which they agreed to create a new set of proposals for consideration at the 2017 convention. Under increasing pressure from athletes, the schools have been seeking a way to address time demands in an orderly, relatively uniform way that would not end up placing restrictions on elite athletes in sports – especially those in swimming and track and field – who believe their training must be virtually year-round.

Genetic analysis companies are forging alliances with personal trainers, chiropractors, and coaches around the world to market genomics tests that they say can help athletes at all levels tailor their workouts to their DNA.

They have struck deals with the Baylor University football team in Texas, with soccer teams in the English Premier League and in Egypt, and with an elite training facility in Arizona for top track and field athletes, including several who competed in the Rio Games.

Yet there is little science to back up the claims that a genetic analysis could identify if a particular athlete is, say, predisposed to benefit from a certain type of exercise, prone to tendon injuries, or wired to have trouble recovering from tough workouts.

… The prevalence of Anterior Cruciate Ligament tears in athletics has become an epidemic, especially when we are talking about the female athlete population. It has become common place to cringe when we, as athletes, parents, coaches or health care professionals watch a female athlete go down holding their knee.

In the United States alone, studies have shown that upwards of 80,000 high school aged, female athletes will suffer from an ACL injury, with most of those injuries occurring in soccer and basketball.

But why do females suffer close to 10 times more ACL injuries than males?

Background: Foot and ankle injuries are increasing in competitive professional and collegiate athletics. Many of these injuries result in considerable missed time from sports and often require surgical intervention. To develop and implement effective practice participation strategies, return-to-play protocols, and injury prevention programs, an understanding of injury trends and epidemiology is vital.

Purpose: This study aimed to evaluate the incidence of foot and ankle injuries in elite athletes participating in 37 sports at a single National Collegiate Athletics Association (NCAA) Division 1 institution.

Study Design: Descriptive epidemiological study.

Methods: We evaluated the injury records of all varsity sports at a single NCAA Division 1 athletics program, including 1076 athletes participating in 37 sports. Detailed injury data were prospectively collected in a secure electronic database over a 2-year period. We reviewed the database for all foot/ankle injuries. Inclusion criteria were any foot/ankle injury that was sustained during an NCAA-sanctioned event and subsequently received medical treatment. Independent variables included athlete and injury demographics, missed days, physician visits, imaging results, and whether the injury required surgery. Injury incidence, relative frequency distributions, and sample proportions were dependent metrics for this investigation.

Results: During the study period, a total of 3861 total musculoskeletal injuries were recorded. There were 1035 foot/ankle injuries (27%). Of all foot/ankle injuries, 21% (218 of 1035) caused the athlete to miss at least 1 day of participation, with an average of 12.3 days of time loss from sport. Furthermore, 27% of athletes with foot/ankle injuries were referred for office evaluation by a physician, and 84% of these required radiologic imaging. The overall injury incidence rate was 3.80 per 1000 athlete-exposures (AEs). The 4 sports with the highest incidence rate (>75th percentile) were women’s gymnastics, women’s cross-country, women’s soccer, and men’s cross country. The most frequently occurring foot/ankle injuries were ankle ligament injuries, tendinopathies or fasciopathies, and bone stress injuries.

Conclusion: The prevalence of foot/ankle injury in a large NCAA Division 1 athletics program was 27% of total musculoskeletal injuries over a 2-year period, with 21% of these injuries resulting in missed time. There were significantly higher foot and ankle injury incidence rates and more missed time in female athletes and women’s sports.

While traditional approaches to dietary analysis in athletes have focused on total daily energy and macronutrient intake, it is now thought that daily distribution of these parameters can also influence training adaptations. Using 7-day food diaries, we quantified the total daily macronutrient intake and distribution in elite youth soccer players from the English Premier League in U18 (n = 13), U15/16 (n = 25) and U13/14 squads (n = 21). Total energy (43.1 ± 10.3, 32.6 ± 7.9, 28.1 ± 6.8 kcal·kg-1·day-1), CHO (6 ± 1.2, 4.7 ± 1.4, 3.2 ± 1.3 g·kg-1·day-1) and fat (1.3 ± 0.5, 0.9 ± 0.3, 0.9 ± 0.3 g·kg-1·day-1) intake exhibited hierarchical differences (p U15/16 > U18. In addition, CHO intake in U18s was lower (p < .05) at breakfast, dinner and snacks when compared with both squads but no differences were apparent at lunch. Furthermore, the U15/16s reported lower relative daily protein intake than the U13/14s and U18s (1.6 ± 0.3 vs. 2.2 ± 0.5, 2.0 ± 0.3 g·kg-1). A skewed distribution (p lunch (~0.5 g·kg-1) > breakfast (~0.3 g·kg-1). We conclude elite youth soccer players do not meet current CHO guidelines. Although daily protein targets are achieved, we report a skewed daily distribution in all ages such that dinner > lunch > breakfast. Our data suggest that dietary advice for elite youth players should focus on both total daily macronutrient intake and optimal daily distribution patterns.

… If you are a soccer player on the anti-sugar bandwagon, please keep reading. The reality is, most of the sugar is evil- fattening-and-bad-for-you hype is targeted to the masses of overfat, underfit people whose bodies handle sugar far differently than do the bodies of lean, fit soccer players.

If you are “addicted to sugar” and have a “wicked-bad sweet tooth,” the chances are sugar is the symptom; the problem is you have simply gotten too hungry. When the body is short on fuel, it starts to crave sweets. It needs quick energy to feed the brain: sugar! The solution to preventing afternoon and evening sweets cravings is to eat heartily at breakfast and lunch.

Nearly two-thirds of NFL players in an ESPN survey say they feel the use of chemical painkillers would be reduced if the league approved marijuana for the same use.

Marijuana is legal in 25 states and Washington, D.C., for medicinal purposes but remains one of eight drugs banned under the NFL’s policy and program on substances of abuse. A test result indicating 35 ng/mL or more of marijuana in the blood stream results in a violation, leading to a graduated series of discipline that includes fines and suspensions.

ESPN.com’s NFL Nation and ESPN The Magazine surveyed 226 players, asking them questions on the state of pain treatment in the league. There are 1,696 players on active rosters and another 256 on practice squads.

I recently discovered an incredible tool for collecting data from the history of the MLB amateur draft. It’s operated by The Baseball Gauge, and it includes tons of very specific data from each year of the draft (1965 to present). The data base breaks out drafted players who reach the majors by whether or not they signed with the drafting organization, their career contributions using bWAR, their contributions to the drafting organization using bWAR, and how their bWAR was amassed via offense, pitching, and defense. I combined these data to see how individual teams performed in the draft and, more importantly, combined the numbers with available scouting directors listed in the always handy Baseball America executive data base. I wanted to see how specific scouting directors had performed.

Scouting, in modern-day football, has become an indispensable part of the game, one that thrives on producing youngsters. And having a setup that taps and extracts youth players with potential has not just now become a necessity in the game, but was one some years ago too. Take any club as an example, be it small or big, plying its trade in the first division or in the fourth, it has a youth setup that strives to propel the club from its foundations. And although, people who form the scouting system of a club don’t get as much credit as those who help the club win things on the pitch, they are just as important. The amount of work they do in the background forms the core of the club and of its existence. They bring the best youngsters that play in areas all across the globe, playing a substantial role in what they become in the future. While Cristiano Ronaldo has become a world heralded superstar, few have any speck of idea about Ed van Steijn, the man who scouted him and eventually played a role in bringing him to Old Trafford back in 2003.

In Part 1 yesterday, I didn’t mention the work of scouting directors with three years or fewer on the job. That’s because directors with such limited work are prone to wild swings and outrageous bWAR+ figures based on a single player. One way to remedy this is to look at individual drafts. Let’s look at the top individual drafts now. (Since most recent draftees haven’t even started their major league careers, these data will exclude drafts from 2009 and later.) Here are the 10 best using those criteria. This is for total talent drafted (signed and unsigned), relative to league:

1976, Bill Lajoie – 578.59

… The 21st century, however, belongs to Football 3.0 (the Asian era). Over the last decade, football has been in the midst of a shift eastwards. Countries including Qatar and states of the United Arab Emirates have built extensive sponsorship portfolios in the West, acquired overseas clubs, and successfully bid to host international tournaments. More recently, China has increased the pace of world football’s ‘Asianisation’, with its bold, ambitious vision for football. At the same time, India has begun to take football more seriously with the inception of its Super League.

US sport continues to exert an influence on Asian sport, particularly through a focus on commercial development; likewise Europe’s football heritage, fan culture and understanding of the game is influencing developments across football’s new world. However, in Asia, there is an added dimension: the role of the state.

At one level, the state is an enabler and a funder of football (for example, see Chinese football’s bamboo revolution), although commercial independence is strongly encouraged. At another level, Asian states are utilising football for soft power and diplomatic purposes, and as a means of nation branding (Qatar is a prime example in all three cases).